


let me lay my head down on the shadow by your side

by annabeth_writes



Series: Season 8 Rewrite [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension, click on the next story in the series if you want to see the tension resolved, even if they don't know it yet, sansa's story is not the same from season 5 onward, they're still cousins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 09:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24967540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabeth_writes/pseuds/annabeth_writes
Summary: A prequel to the story.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Series: Season 8 Rewrite [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807105
Comments: 16
Kudos: 169





	let me lay my head down on the shadow by your side

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic purely meant to explain some canon changes that I made to fit the new version of this story.

He found her in the crypts.

Or perhaps he had been waiting there.

She froze in the midst of lighting a candle at her father’s statue, watching him hobble closer with rattled breaths. Her hands trembled and fury simmered beneath her skin. The third time she had seen his face and she felt no less angry than their two interactions before. Sansa wanted to scream at him. To demand justice. To make him answer for the blood of her brothers. For their pain. But she watched, giving him nothing at all. His stench reached her, nearly making her gag. Reek. That is what Ramsay called him.

But all that she could see was Theon.

“You don’t belong down here,” she said, her voice trembling with all the words she held back.

He did not look her in the eye. He never did.

“You-you can’t do it.”

Sansa almost didn’t hear him. He spoke so quietly now, nothing like the boisterous boy that she once knew. She knew that she would see them, if she closed her eyes. Robb, broad and handsome and so alive. Theon, grinning and laughing and so arrogant. And Jon, dark and brooding and so kind.

“I can’t do what?” she demanded, pushing the ghosts of her past to the back of her mind.

He looked like he might run at any second, his feet shuffling and his hands twitching. His eyes darting this way and that. Fearful. Terrified. What had they done to him? What had _Ramsay_ done to him?

“M-marry him. You can’t… marry him.”

Sansa turned to face him fully, tilting her head to the side.

“Because of what he did to you?”

Theon shook his head, a violent tremor running through him as he finally lifted his eyes to meet her own.

“Because of what he did to _them_.”

*****

Kyra. Violet. Tansy.

She would never forget their names.

She would never forget what was done to them.

She would never forget that Theon warned her.

*****

“Tell me why Bran and Rickon should be gone while you still breathe the air!” she shouted, taking hold of his face to force his eyes to meet hers. “Tell me, Theon! Tell me that they weren’t your brothers!”

“They weren’t Bran and Rickon!”

*****

She took his hand.

*****

“The horse is dying,” Sansa said listlessly, her voice little more than a croak.

The poor animal could barely hold her weight. She could feel his ribs as easily as her own. Theon had stopped riding him two days ago. It did little to help.

“We can’t stop,” Theon said, tugging on the reins to guide them forward.

She slipped from the horse’s back, stumbling on her feet before falling to her knees in the snow. Theon was there, his hands on her face. Sweeping her hair from her eyes. Wiping the tears that slipped down her cheeks.

“We’re dying,” she whispered.

“We just have to go North,” Theon said, pulling her to her feet. “We just have to get to Castle Black. Jon is Lord Commander, remember?”

 _Jon_ , her heart cried out.

Sansa dragged herself along at his side, the horse forgotten as howls rose up in the distance.

They began to run.

*****

“Lady Sansa, I offer my services once again.”

*****

“They’ll keep you safer than I ever could.”

Sansa exhaled slowly as realization sank in. They were warmer now. They had a fire and protection, thanks to Brienne and Podrick. But it didn’t matter. Not when he hated himself more than anyone else ever could.

“You’re not coming with us?” she said quietly, a lump rising in her throat.

Theon lifted his eyes, looking more like himself than he had in days. Weeks. Maybe even years.

“I would have taken you all the way to the Wall,” he said in a broken voice, a tear slipping down his cheek. “I would have died to get you there.”

Sansa pressed her lips together as a sob threatened to escape, throwing herself into his arms without a second thought. He held her close with bony arms, whispering her name and finding forgiveness in her embrace.

*****

The gate creaked loudly as it opened. Sansa gripped the reins of the horse, taken from a fallen Bolton soldier, and followed Brienne and Podrick through. She felt eyes from all sides, fixed upon her. Piercing her. Stripping her. Judging her. She wanted to hide. She wanted to scream. She wanted to… to… to live. Sansa slipped from the back of the horse and winced as her feet hit the ground.

A shiver rose up her spine as she looked around at this castle that had very little place in her mind until now. She thought of Jon every once in a while, hoping that he’d found more happiness at the Wall than she did in King’s Landing. But it was such a somber place that she doubted he ever could. Her breath lingered visibly in the air as she wrung her hands together anxiously, turning in a circle as the silence in the courtyard seemed to grow more tense with each passing second.

Then she saw him.

He was frozen on a covered walkway, his hands clenching down upon the railing as he stared and stared and stared. Though he was older, with more scars and lines upon his face, she could see the boy he’d once been in his face. Those Stark grey eyes, so much like her father’s. Sansa’s breath caught in her throat as he turned, never taking his eyes off of her even when he descended the ice-covered steps. She feared that he may fall, but his steps were sure and unfaltering.

The crowd of black-garbed men parted. If she had looked closer at them, she might have seen the awe and fear in their eyes as they beheld the man that walked among them. She might have questioned why they trembled at his presence. But Sansa did not dare look away from him. The last of them. Her family. Jon. Jon, Jon, _Jon._ She gasped out his name as he drew up short much too far away from her, uncertainty flitting through his eyes. Sansa’s hands dropped to her skirts, lifting them from the ground as she darted forward.

He met her with three long strides, his arms strong and comforting as he gathered her into his chest. She all but collapsed into him, pressing her face into his shoulder as she let her tears fall and fall and fall. Jon didn’t let her go. He didn’t turn her away. He only held her, swaying them both lightly on their feet as he pressed a kiss into her hair and whispered softly for her hearing alone.

“Sansa.”

Her name had never sounded sweeter.

*****

“Where will you go?” she asked.

“Where will _we_ go?” he corrected.

*****

They rode out from Castle Black in new furs with an odd company at their backs. A smuggler and a priestess of R’hllor. The remnants of Stannis Baratheon’s army and what remained of the free folk.

And a giant.

Sansa felt galvanized.

*****

She laid on his cot, taking up little of the room due to the direwolf that shared it with her. The howling winds outside of the tent did not bother her. They weren’t why she couldn’t sleep. She watched as he sat on a stool and cleaned his sword methodically. An act that calmed him. Sansa remembered their father doing the same in the godswood.

“Will you tell me?” she asked, folding her hands beneath her head as she turned on her side to face him.

Jon paused in his movements and looked up, his eyes shining in the low light.

“Tell you what?” he said, tilting his head to the side slightly.

“Everything.”

Something passed over his face. Hesitation. Sansa almost called back her words as he returned his attention to his sword. Then…

He spoke.

She listened.

*****

“Will you listen now?” she asked the next night.

Jon nodded, watching as she wove stitch after stitch into the midnight blue fabric that they picked up along the way and listening as she told him her story.

*****

The bonfire was the biggest she had seen in years, the flames reaching high into the sky and covering her in warmth even though she sat at a fair distance. Jon had chosen the spot, cautious of the wine that they drank. A gift from House Hornwood, along with the two hundred men that they pledged to their cause. Sansa knew that there was color high in her cheeks and that her laughter might have spilled too freely from her lips, but it had been ages since she felt so… unlimited.

When Tormund darted up and seized her hand, Jon rose to his feet to intervene. Sansa waved him away with a bright laugh, letting the chieftain pull her into the odd dance off the free folk. There was no music. Nothing to guide their feet. Yet she found their rhythm all the same, spinning around the fire as her hair streamed down her back, falling loose from her pins with every turn. One after another, they passed her along and spun her about. Sansa knew the wildling way. But she could feel Jon nearby, his eyes upon her. He would give her this time of unrestrained joy and ensure that no one stole her along the way.

*****

“You’re going to die tomorrow, Lord Bolton,” she said, feeling a vindictive pleasure at the rage that stirred in his eyes. “Sleep well.”

*

“If you had asked my advice earlier, I would have told you not to attack Winterfell until we had a larger force. Or is that obvious too?”

“When will we have a larger force?” Jon demanded, taking a step forward as his eyes flashed angrily. “We’ve pleaded with every house that will have us. The Blackfish can’t help us. We’re lucky to have this many men!”

Sansa shook her head, bracing her hands upon her hips as she glared up at him.

“It’s not enough!”

“No, it’s not enough! It’s what we have!”

She inhaled sharply, realizing how close they stood. Mere inches between them. Jon swallowed hard, as if he realized the same. Sansa swayed back on her heels but did not move, her chest rising and falling quickly as she stared into his eyes unflinchingly. She felt the sudden urge to lick her lips, only managing to restrain herself just in time. Something stirred between them. A crackling air of tension that she had not felt with anyone before. Her body hummed with awareness at how close he stood, her hands itching to reach out. Sansa banished the thought of it from her mind, blaming it all on the fear of failure.

“Battles have been won against greater odds,” Jon said, his voice much softer as he stepped away.

Sansa exhaled slowly as his eyes released her own, turning away to gather her cloak from the back of the chair where it lay.

“I did not escape from him just to end up back where I was before,” she said, turning back to look at him. “He will not have me. Do you understand?”

“I won’t let him touch you,” Jon said, his words heavy with meaning. “I’ll protect you, Sansa. I promise.”

She bit back the poisonous words that sprung to her lips, hearing Cersei’s voice repeat them in her mind.

“Goodnight, Jon.”

Sansa did not linger to hear his answer, striding out of the tent as she prayed that her letter had found its way to Lord Baelish, even as she hated herself for it.

*****

Ramsay could barely keep to his knees, bloody and beaten as he was. Sansa pressed her thumb into the center of her palm and watched as Tormund pressed Longclaw into Jon’s waiting hand.

“If you have any last words, I will hear them now.”

Ramsay’s eyes lifted, pale and glinting in the broken mess that was his face. She did not shiver or grimace as he looked at her, a grin pulling at his ruined lips and showing her the broken teeth within his mouth.

“I would have made you my greatest masterpiece,” he rasped, his voice thick with the blood that filled his mouth. “You would have been beautiful.”

His eyes flitted to Jon, looking endlessly amused by the rage in his face.

“Maybe in another life.”

She did not look away.

For Rickon. For Theon. For Kyra and Violet and Tansy. For all the others that suffered at his hands.

She did not look away.

*****

He watched in silence, his eyes following the deft movements of her fingers as wove the needle in and out of the wound upon his shoulder. Sansa did not speak either. There was little to say. The dead were burning. The castle was theirs. Rickon was dead. She clipped the thread once she finished, refusing to let herself cry. If she started, Sansa feared that she would never be able to stop. Setting the needle and thread aside, she focused her attention upon his face.

“You don’t have to do this,” Jon said quietly.

Sansa dipped the rag into the bowl of water, wringing the excess out before turning to wipe away the blood and grime that was caked onto his skin.

“Yes, I do,” she said quietly, wiping it away bit by bit.

Her eyes met his, seeing all of the exhaustion and pain and relief that stirred within her too.

“For now, we are all that remains,” she said, rinsing the blood from the rag before starting again. “If we do not care for one another, who will?”

Jon said nothing at all, watching and watching until she finished her task. Then he lifted his hands to close gently around her wrists, stilling her in place before she could rise to her feet.

“You will always have me, Sansa.”

A smile formed upon her lips and she nodded, easing her wrists from his hands only to catch them in her own.

“And you will always have me.”

**Author's Note:**

> TL;DR
> 
> Basically Sansa escapes from Winterfell before marrying Ramsay because Theon "wakes up" a little earlier and wants to keep her from suffering.


End file.
